On the night of Nov. 29, a dozen Syrian opposition figures gathered at a student eatery in Moscow called Picasso, a cheap dive on the campus of the University of People’s Friendship whose walls are decorated with a mashup of images from the artist’s blue period. It may sound odd that enemies of Bashar Assad were gathering in a country that still had the dictator’s back. But these men and their organization may be Russia’s only hope of influence in a post-Assad Syria.

As young men, several of the Syrians at Picasso had studied at the university, which hosted the exchange programs that formed the early bonds between Moscow and Damascus in the 1960s. Indeed, the gathering could have been mistaken for a class reunion, as toasts were made and stories told around a table laden with snacks and bottles of midshelf vodka.

Wearing a black leather jacket and a week’s worth of stubble, Riad Darar, a former imam and one of the leading members of the group known as the National Coordination Committee (NCC), sat at the table sipping juice and nibbling on a quesadilla. In Syria, his group is viewed among the rest of the opposition as Assad collaborators. The Free Syrian Army denounced it in September as “the other face” of the regime, and unlike other opposition groups, the NCC has not called for the entire ruling government to be chased out of power.

That is one of the reasons the NCC gets along so well with Russia, which has been seeking forces inside Syria who are willing to negotiate with Assad. In this regard, the NCC may have been Russia’s last hope of shielding its ally. Earlier on Nov. 29, Darar and the other members of the group had met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose position, they felt, had clearly changed. “We have always tried to explain to the Russians that they shouldn’t be on the side of the regime but on the side of the people,” Darar says. (One of his comrades at the table translated for me from Arabic to Russian.) “In this most recent meeting, we felt that they now understand.”

If so, it still took the Russian government an additional two weeks to admit that Assad — Russia’s last true ally in the Arab world — is losing the civil war. On Dec. 13, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov — the ministry’s Middle East point man and a fluent Arabic speaker — became the first senior government official to publicly state that Assad’s downfall looks imminent. “We have to face the facts,” he told a session of the Public Chamber, an advisory body to the Russian government. “The trend is going in such a direction that the regime is losing ever more control over ever more parts of the country’s territory,” said Bogdanov, whose remarks were carried by two of Russia’s leading news agencies, state-owned Itar-Tass and the more independent Interfax. The next day, the ministry denied that Bogdanov had made any “statements or special interviews for journalists” and held firm to its position that “there is no alternative to a political resolution” to the conflict. But even if Bogdanov’s remarks were not meant for public consumption, they signaled a turning point. “Of course we cannot rule out the opposition’s victory,” he said, according to both news wires.

Faced with that prospect, it was only logical that Russia would start looking for willing partners within the opposition. The West had started this process long ago. After months of vetting rebel groups for possible links to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, the U.S., the E.U. and several Arab states bestowed their stamp of approval on a broad assembly of rebel groups called the Syrian National Coalition, which was formed in Qatar on Nov. 11. On Dec. 11, the U.S. recognized it as the only legitimate Syrian government, and about 100 other countries followed. Russia stayed away, calling the new group illegitimate, while continuing to look for its own rebel allies.

The NCC seemed the obvious choice. It is the only opposition group that is still prepared to negotiate with Assad, and it’s the only one to agree with Russia that supplying arms to all rebels must stop. At the restaurant, Haytham Manna, the NCC’s foreign-affairs official, even parroted Russia’s criticism of the West for double dealing, saying it was wrong for the U.S. and Europe to call for a peace deal while also supporting the rebels. “That’s [like having] one hand in my house and one hand in the house of my neighbor,” he said, playing with a string of ivory-colored prayer beads. “It’s not really a good option.”

But for Russia, there are no good options left. The NCC is made up mostly of academics and dissidents with no military wing, and it has little hope of turning the situation in Russia’s favor if Assad is overthrown. “They have zero influence in Syria,” says Hassan Al-Huri, a Syrian businessman in Moscow who owns the Picasso restaurant and hosted his countrymen there. “If anything, the Syrian people now hate them for associating with the Russians,” he told me after the dinner was over.

That means Moscow has no choice but to accept the loss of its last real foothold in the Middle East, says Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs. Says he: “Maybe they have no more illusions.”

The big problem for Russia is that they've supported a despotic Ba'athist regime in Syria for deacades, with plenty of blood on its hands. Now the locals are strong enough to do something about it, and the Russians can't bring enough killing force to bear on them. This leaves them in the uneviable position of trying to defend their indefensible policy with regards the Syrian people.

I don't expect Russian nationalists will be able to talk their way out of this one. Won't stop them from trying of course..

Simon
Shuster was lying. This is a common lie that the Western media is repeated from
day to day. Allegedly first Russia
supported Bashar al-Assad and now throws it. In fact Vladimir Putin and
Minister of foreign Affairs of Russia
Sergey Lavrov with the beginning of the conflict have repeatedly - Russia does not
support the regime of Bashar al-Assad, as well as any other regime in the
world. We protect international law. Russia
and China,
as countries having the right of veto at the UN, a heavy load of
responsibility. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed that Russia and China agreed that violations of the
international law and the UN Charter must not be permitted.Member of the Chinese State Council Dai
Bingguo: the Russian and Chinese diplomatic cooperation is based on "the
need to strictly adhere to the international norms and the principles contained
in the UN Charter, and not to allow their violation." There is no
difference who will be the next President in Syria. The main thing that it was
the choice of the Syrians, without interference from outside. The United States and NATO, and some of the
countries of the Persian Gulf supported the armed opposition and the
coordination of actions of international terrorists, penetrating in Syria. Such
actions are accompanied by a large amount of misinformation in the Western
media, Western media are complicitthe
terror . Disinformation aimed at destabilizationother States, is a "state
terrorism", in accordance with the Geneva Convention, 1978.

The NCC - so unreasonable for wanting a rational, pragmatic, transition for their own country instead of a nationwide bloodbath fueled by NATO and Al Qaeda flooding the country with foreign mercenaries and enough weapons to keep blood flowing for years - especially after the "success" in Libya which is still writhing conflict, genocide and under the fist of a new brutal dictatorship.

According to Seymour Hersh's 2007 article "The Redirection," the violent overthrow of Syria's government via US-Saudi-Israeli armed terrorists was a foregone conclusion. It's not that Assad wouldn't negotiate with the terrorists back in early 2011, it's that in early 2011, the terrorists already had their mind set on killing everyone in the process of establishing Saudi-inspired "Islamic" terror emirate. The NCC is the real opposition.

Of course Russia and yes even China are both going to see what they can salvage since Assad is most likely gone.Why the Syrians would even consider becoming allies is basically up to what the two countries offer them.What they do not look at is how Russia and China supported Assad's regime in more than 1 way.Most likely with weapons and vetoing a no fly zone in Syria that would have protected civilians.both countries want to maintain a strong foothold in the Middle East and possibly using Syria as a jumping point to other countries.Either way the UN and NATO should be weary of any moves made in Syria at this time.This is going to be a very vulnerable country.

"Zbigniew Brzezinski,
like a man who has created the "al-Qaeda", instructed Ben Incense,
said many times that international terrorism does not exist, there are
"our" (American) fighters with bloody regimes, which supposedly stand
for human rights, for freedom, and is "not ours" - they are fighting
against us and stand for social justice. Since liberalism denies social
justice, so those who struggle for it in the eyes of the people who run the
world of known terrorists. Everyone else, who is struggling in the interests of
the United States
under any ideologies, including radical - it is freedom fighters. Only in the
era of the Bush administration to justify the invasion of Afghanistan, Laden was declared an
enemy, Brzezinski then indignant, saying, we are renting own
agents." http://imgur.com/eefmp

Barack Obama is
promoting its strategy of «leading from behind»

George Friedman under
the heading «The Emerging Doctrine of the United States» writes:

"United States has entered a period
in which it must move from military domination to more subtle manipulation, and
more important, allow events to take their course."

Friedman without a doubt
calls the essence of American foreign policy in the current period - «subtle
manipulation».

This means that the United States will continue to Finance al-Qaeda
to offset unwanted regimes, wreaking havoc in North Africa
and the middle East. It is connected with the old phobias United States, which separates the
ocean with other countries, American planners suffer from the «syndrome of the
island of thinking». On the principle of - the more fire, the more witches
dance. Let the whole world was to be burned in the Fire, but the United States
hopes to sit out. In the twenty-first century sit out is not possible. The United States
cut a branch, where they are sitting.